In a distributed data processing environment, multiple copies of the same file may be kept on multiple nodes to provide faster access and data redundancy. A replication protocol based on modification time stamps can operate to maintain integrity between the copies, eventually updating unmodified copies of the file to include changes as they are made. However, this means that later modifications receive update precedence over earlier modifications, when each occurs after the last synchronization event. Thus, some (earlier) modifications can be ignored, resulting in permanent data loss.